


take what the water gave me

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Gen, Haunted Houses, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 09:26:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,570
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8440273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: Skye tried to warn them it was a murder house...





	

**Author's Note:**

> A slightly spooky fic posted just barely still on Halloween (it still is where I live! It counts!) and inspired by shineyma's [awesome gifset](http://shineyma.tumblr.com/post/152557077196/genre-swap-agents-of-shield-as-a-horror-show).

Jemma really needs to get to bed. Surely the others have already gone and she’s not much looking forward to navigating the dark, spacious house all by herself. And the water’s so nice. Just five more minutes. That’s all she needs. 

It’s been ages since she got in a good swim - for all the Bus gets around, it rarely lands anywhere with access to a pool. In fact, the last time she swam might just be with Ward in the Atlantic, which doesn’t count at all as she was fully dressed and had just nearly died. Not exactly a recipe for a pleasant dip.

The second Mr. Malick told them he had an indoor swimming pool, she went straight to it, ignoring all the architecture and antique decorations the others were busy oo-ing and ah-ing over.

She floats on her back now, drowsing in water that is just the right temperature to sooth muscles that are still buzzing from the laps she did earlier. If she doesn’t get out soon, she’ll be in real danger of falling asleep right here and drowning. And wouldn’t that be an embarrassing way to go?

But it’s so comfortable and so lovely to be in the water after so long.

She opens her arms and brings them to her sides in a slow stroke meant to both wake her up and bring her closer to the edge. Possibly. She’s had her eyes closed too long to know where she is.

She looks up at the sun roof. The stars are barely visible through the murky glass, but she can tell by the shaping on the windows that she’s nearing one end of the pool. Likely the deeper end.

There’s a ladder over here, isn’t there? She rolls to her front to see. A chill trails over her chest as it dips under the water. One of her feet has actually fallen asleep on her; it’s so numb, the swell of water moving beneath it as she straightens feels almost like a living thing.

She huffs out a laugh. If she’s feeling phantom fish in the water, she really needs to get to bed, five minutes or no five minutes.

The ladder spotted, she makes for it in a lazy doggy paddle.

Halfway there, she turns suddenly, spinning over onto her back briefly before treading water. Her foot did it again, that same strange sensation of something touching her in the water. She stares at the dark waves she created, watching for any sign of movement she knows she won’t see.

She’s alone in the pool. And if there were any fish in here, she’d have surely noticed them hours ago.

Her heart still pounding foolishly, she resumes her swim.

 

When her promised five minutes more finally do end, the surface of the pool is still as glass and her clothes sit as they have all night, a rumpled pile at the water’s edge.

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

Okay, calm. Skye can totally do calm. Just because she woke up in her underwear, strapped to a creepy exam table and the last memory she has is of finding a dead body hanging from a chandelier does _not_ mean she can’t be calm.

Long breath in - one, two, three, four, five, six - long breath out - six, five, four, three, two, one.

There.

Better.

“ _What the hell is going on here?_ ” she demands.

A low voice chuckles somewhere in the shadows. God, she hates this place. She _said_ it was a murder house - didn’t she say it was a murder house? But oh no. They had to take the guy with the weird accent up on his offer they stay the night. Just because they saved his life, A.C. was so sure he wouldn’t trap them in a horror movie.

Well guess what, A.C.?

He did!

Skye hopes he’s being chased through the basement by a mad scientist. It’d serve him right.

She doesn’t actually hope that, but thinking so makes her feel better as the guy doing the chuckling circles around her.

“Who are you?” she snaps, tugging at the restraints. “If you think you’re gonna indulge in some perverted fantasy here, buddy, you’ve got another thing- Ward?”

Smiling, he steps out of the shadows, into the bright light. “Oh, Skye,” he sighs.

Her relief disappears. Fast. That is not a nice “oh, Skye.” That is an “oh, Skye, so sorry you’re about to die.” Except without the rhyming.

Or maybe with it, Ward’s kinda got this manic look in his eye that makes her think he might go there.

“Ward.” She pulls herself up so she’s sitting. It gives her a better angle to tug at the loose strap on her right side without him seeing. “What’s going on? Where are we?”

He touches her cheek and she instantly freezes. They don’t have that kind of relationship. There’s flirting, yeah, but nothing more. And definitely not this weird kind of petting thing he’s doing now. She is not into that.

“It was never gonna work,” he says sadly.

She draws in a breath - one, two, three- nope. She’s done. This is all  _way_ too creepy to wait. “What was never gonna work?” she asks.

“I’m a bad man, Skye. You could never love me. Not really.”

O-kay. That is so not what she was expecting here. “Ward. We can talk about this later, all right? Right now we need to get out of here and find the others. I found a _body_ in the dining room earlier. This is not a kosher place to spend the night.”

Ward’s dropped his hold on her cheek to step away, partially back into the shadows. “But I’m afraid,” he says like she didn’t just tell him there’s a killer somewhere in the house, “it doesn’t stop me wanting your heart.”

She twists her arm, straining to get it free. Almost…

“Okay, fine. We can talk about it!” she snaps as her arm protests the angle. “You’re not such a bad guy - when you’re not being all emotionless. You’re actually kinda cool. So maybe let me out of this and-”

Ward’s back. With a knife. The kind Simmons uses in the lab when she’s cutting into dead things.

“So if you won’t give it to me, I’m gonna have to take it.”

He presses her down onto the bed and she doesn’t even really fight him because knife! Really big knife that is coming closer and closer!

“Ward, think about what you’re doing. This is _insane_.”

“No.” He straightens up, bringing the knife down over her breasts. She thinks he’s gonna start cutting but it just hovers there, holding her in place.

She forces herself to look away from the shining metal to meet his eyes. Maybe she can talk him down, get him to think through whatever this- this- this psycho-vibe that’s taken him over is. She opens her mouth to say something - _anything_ \- that might save her life, but then she sees the shadow move across his face.

No, no. Not _across_ his face. _Under_ it. Something curls over his cheekbone before disappearing behind his eye.

“No,” he says while she stares in horror, “I’m not insane. I know exactly what I’m doing, Skye. This is the right thing. This is how it has to be.”

“W- W- Ward,” she stutters, turning her arm as frantically as she dares for fear of drawing his attention. “There is something _very_ wrong with you. We need to get you back to the Bus, get you looked over, okay?”

He tips his head to one side. With the light behind him and knowing that thing is somewhere behind those dead eyes of his, the move looks frighteningly inhuman. “The only thing wrong with me,” he says, “is my attachment to you. Goodbye, Skye.”

He holds her shoulder down and lines up the knife over her sternum. She can actually feel it against her skin, cold and sharp and inches away from ending her life.

Her arm comes free.

She hits him, throwing all her weight into it and sending them both - bed and all - down onto the floor.

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

“Where are you going?” Phil asks.

Melinda does that thing where she stops but doesn’t look his way, like she’s having this little mini-conversation with herself about him catching her.

“Back to the Bus,” she says finally.

He closes his book - the Complete Works of Edgar Allen Poe seemed like the perfect, if possibly foolish, choice for tonight - and stands to meet her at the library doors. She was trying to sneak out without anyone noticing, didn’t think he’d still be up, haunting the old place. She should know better.

“Something wrong with your room?” he asks. “It not come with a bed?”

She rolls her eyes while she brings them around to look at him. He’s gotta try not to smile. He really does love pulling her pigtails.

“It’s not my bed.”

Phil winces. “Don’t let old Hammerjaw hear you say that. All the weeks he spent getting us broken in so we could sleep anywhere…”

The mention of their old teacher at the Academy has her scowling. She _hated_ Hammerjaw. “I _can_ sleep anywhere,” she says, “but when my bed is available, I really don’t see the point of making do anywhere else. So if you’ll excuse me…”

He lets her step past him before he says, “You really want to hurt our host’s feelings?”

Melinda stops, sighs, turns - but doesn’t make it all the way back around to face him. “Phil,” she says. He knows that tone. That is a bad tone.

He steps into the hall to follow her gaze. The door across the way is open, giving him a view of a sitting room and the very transparent woman hovering in front of the fireplace.

“Damn,” he says. “I really liked Malick too.”

Melinda pats his shoulder as the woman turns. “I know you did.”

The woman screams and flies straight for them.

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

Skye’s shoulder hits the hard tile floor, but so does the bed, hard enough one of her legs comes free and she manages a kick straight to Ward’s head. He goes down as she cries out.

“Ahhhhow ow ow ow!” she whines. That hurts.

Tears spring to her eyes, blurring her vision and making it that much harder to tug at the restraint on her left arm.

“Skye?”

“Oh, God, not you too,” she moans as Fitz comes around the end of the bed.

“Not me too wha- _what did you do to Ward?_ ”

“What did _I_ do to _him_?” Skye shrieks. “I woke up like this and he came at me with a _knife_. He was talking about cutting my heart out.”

Fitz’s eyes grow round briefly before he starts untying her leg. “Yeah, sounds about right.”

“What?” Skye asks, too shocked to get back to work on her arm.

“You remember the statue in my room?”

She scoffs. Like she’ll ever forget the half-naked woman coming out of Fitz’s wall. She was planning on teasing him about it for basically ever, but that was before this place decided to fulfill all her suspicions.

“She came to life and tried to seduce me.” Fitz’s head is conspicuously low over her leg, but she can still see the tips of his ears turning red.

As her experience tonight hasn’t gone much better - she _is_ still in her underwear - she gives him a minute before pressing. “And?”

Her foot slips free. “And I turned her down because SHIELD SOP section four very clearly states that agents should not engage in sexual activity with persons of questionable species.”

Skye laughs. “Yeah. That’s why.”

He gives her a little grin along with a hand up. “Well that was the reason I gave her. Didn’t want to offend.”

“Yeah, how’d that work out for you?”

He turns his head to one side, lets her see the bloody, matted mess that bitch made of his curls. “She may’ve been able to move around, but turns out she was still made of stone.”

“Ouch.” She looks to Ward. “What’re we gonna do about him? We can’t carry him, can’t leave him.” What if one of the others finds him? Or he finds them? Skye shivers.

Warm fabric presses into her hands and she jumps. It’s Fitz’s shirt. She shrugs it on while she turns, following his movements.

There’s a table a few feet away with lots more fun knives Ward probably planned on chopping her up with. There’s also a coil of rope.

She grins. “He’s been saying I need to work on my knot tying.”

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

“I hate ghosts,” Melinda says, dodging behind an armchair as a dictionary flies at her head.

Turns out, taking cover in the library wasn’t a great idea. The ethereal woman disappeared without listening to any of his standard welcome wagon speech and then books started flying around in a whirlwind. It’d be cool if it wasn’t so dangerous.

“You know,” Phil says, using Poe to knock away a smaller tome, “if you say that when we find Simmons, she’s gonna do that thing where she judges you.”

Melinda gives him a look. “Yeah, I invented that thing.” Standing where he is, Phil can believe it. “Down!” she yells.

He hits the deck just in time for a set of Shakespeares to go zooming over his head and into the wall so fast they dent it.

“Yeesh.” He sweeps the room, looking for any sign of where to direct his words, but nothing really stands out as more ghostly than the rest. “What do you want?” he calls, aiming it at the ceiling.

A wicked cackle sounds.

“Oh yeah,” Melinda says, “that’s gonna be good.”

The books still suspended fly almost casually into the walls and furniture. The woman appears in the center of the room. Now that she isn’t flying at them at top speed, he can really see her. She’s young, maybe Ward’s age, very pretty. Or would be if half her face wasn’t a mess of open flesh.

“What do you want from us?” Phil asks again. He steps out from behind his own chair to approach her. “We’re not here to hurt you. We meant no harm coming here. We were invited.”

She grins and it takes all his willpower not to recoil at the way it opens up her gaping wounds. “Leave,” she says.

“Okay,” Phil says. “We will. But our people are still here and there’s a civilian too, the man who owns this house. Mr. Malick? Do you know him?”

She shakes her head slowly.

“Okay, well we can’t leave without him or our friends. If you’ll just let us get them-”

“Leave!” she yells. The books still on the shelves shake.

Her expression turns abruptly cool and calm again. Phil’s having trouble keeping up.

She lifts a hand to his cheek. “Or die.”

Pain tears at his skin. Melinda yells his name and the world goes sideways. Next thing he knows he’s on the floor, clutching his bleeding cheek.

“You okay?” Melinda asks.

“Where is she?”

She shakes her head. She got away.

“What happened?” Melinda asks.

Phil wipes his bloody hand on his pants and lurches to his feet with her help. “I could feel her fingers.”

“Yeah, I’ll bet.”

“No. I could feel them _in my head_.” He touches a spot just above and in front of his ear, the one that ached for days after the team pulled him out of Raina’s machine. “We need to find the others.”

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

“Wait,” Skye whispers. The back of her hand hits Leo in the chest and the two of them swing sideways until their backs hit the wall.

“You heard something?” Leo whispers. He strains his ears but he can’t-

There’s a creak. A definite creak coming from the hallway up ahead.

He glances back. They left Ward behind on a totally different floor, but he can’t help but check to see if he’s somehow caught up to them.

“What about your girlfriend?” Skye asks.

“Not my girlfriend,” Leo says quickly, unable to let the insult slide. “But I dunno.” He tricked her into getting her head stuck between two rungs on the balcony outside his room and then booked it out of there. There’s no telling whether she got free - or there’s something worse around the corner.

Skye hefts the knife she took off that surgical table Ward had set up. Or Ward just found and took advantage of. Leo’s not really willing to discount any possibilities at this point.

Slowly, they creep closer to the nearest corner. Oh yeah, there’s definitely something over there. Leo can hear cloth moving along the wall, which means it’s a person, not his statue. He looks around and grabs a conveniently placed candlestick. Statues need to be tricked, but people he can hurt.

He really hopes it’s not another of their friends.

Skye meets his eyes. He nods. And then, together, they leap forward.

“Oh my God!” Skye yells, stumbling back. Leo’s shoulder hits the corner and he stays there, grateful for the support.

“What do you two think you’re doing?” May snaps.

“What happened?” Coulson asks, his eyes sweeping over first Skye and then Leo. Right. They still haven’t gotten around to finding clothes.

“What happened,” Skye says, tugging his shirt tighter around her shoulders, “is I was _right_. This is a murder house.”

Coulson rolls his eyes, but at the same time he nods. He’s seen something. May too probably, since they’re sneaking around here together.

“Fitz got attacked by his furniture,” Skye goes on. “And I nearly got Silence of the Lambs’d by Ward!”

“Ward?” May asks.

“He went all serial killer! He kept talking about how he was a bad person and he needed to get rid of me. And then his _face_!” She shudders.

“Wait, what about his face?” Leo asks. He didn’t see anything weird about it - other than the swelling where Skye hit him.

“There was something under his skin, moving around.” Her mouth twists down in disgust.

“Any idea what it was?” Coulson asks.

“Other than super gross? No.”

He sighs out a breath. “Simmons might have some- Where’s Simmons?”

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

Grant is really regretting pushing Skye to work on her knots. He strains, knowing even if he manages to pull just right, it’ll still be a long, hard struggle to get it done without accidentally trapping himself even worse.

Fuck.

He slams his aching head against the floor. He should’ve just slit her throat while she was unconscious instead of talking to her. John’s right. He is way too sentimental for his own good.

The pounding in his head is big and loud, shaking his whole skull, but there’s another sound. Soft. Quiet. Wet.

She steps around the side of the bed Skye left overturned, leaving a watery trail behind her.

“Have a nice swim?” he asks, his eyes dropping low. She’s dressed in Stephanie’s old dress, the one she died in, and the water from the pool has it clinging to her every curve.

“Yes,” Simmons says. She steps lightly around him and a moment later he hears a blade slide along the tile. He grins.

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

They find Simmons’ clothes but not her.

“There’s no body,” Melinda says while Skye wraps an arm around Fitz’s shoulders.

He shakes her off to pick up the clothes and shoves them at her. “You might as well.”

“No,” Skye says, pushing them back towards Fitz. Melinda throws Phil a look. He’s down at the far end of the pool, staring into the murky water, searching for a body.

“You know if we find her and she sees you like that, she’s gonna be mad you didn’t wear them. So just put ’em on.”

Skye reluctantly takes the bundle and steps aside. Melinda leaves them to it and wanders after Phil.

“She’s not in there,” she says.

“She could be weighted down.” His voice sounds normal enough, but there’s a tightness to his mouth and eyes…

She touches his arm. “She’s not down there.” Whatever this is, whatever’s messing with them, it’s not going to put a body somewhere they won’t find it.

Phil nods and together they head back.

“We should split up,” he says.

“What!” Skye’s voice echoes sharply off the tile walls.

“Sir, with all due respect,” Fitz says, “are you _insane_?”

“There’s something in this house that doesn’t want us here - something that apparently scared Simmons bad enough she left here naked - and we’re not leaving her and Malick alone with it. We find them faster if we split into teams of two. I think we mostly covered the second floor. Fitz and I will take the third and-”

“We’ll take the first,” Skye says. She meets Melinda’s eyes. “I think I know where Malick is.”

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

“We’ll find her,” Coulson says softly.

The two of them have been checking every room on the third floor for nearly half an hour with no sign of Simmons or Malick or any ghosts or living statues or whatever. Leo’s starting to wonder if whatever happened here is done.

And then he worries that it’s just lulling them into complacency.

“Simmons is gonna be fine.”

“Yeah,” Leo says. “We’ll find her and she’ll be embarrassed to be running around naked as a jaybird and we’ll all have a good laugh while she figures out what’s gotten under Ward’s skin.”

Coulson stops him with a hand on his arm. He’s got that dad look on his face. “That’s exactly what’s gonna happen,” he says. Leo almost believes him.

“Leave!”

They turn and there’s a transparent woman hovering back the way they came. 

“This your ghost?” Leo asks, studying her critically.

“Yep,” Coulson says. To the ghost he says, “Kinda tough with you blocking the way. Or you could just help us find our friends and we’ll be on our way.”

The woman shakes her head, giving them a good view of her exposed molars. Leo bites down a grimace.

“You want us gone, right?” he demands. “So help us find them and we’ll go! Simmons is somewhere in this house, alone and scared. Help us find her!”

The undamaged side of the woman’s mouth pulls upward. “No,” she says softly. Her eyes slide back to Coulson. “Go!” she bellows, so loud it brings a wind with it.

When it dies down, she’s gone.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Leo says.

Coulson gives him a look. “Let’s hope the girls are having more luck.”

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

Skye was right, she did know where Malick was. She didn’t get a great view the first time, but from this angle, up on the balcony that rims the whole dining room, she can see his face in the twisted mess of a body balanced on the chandelier.

“Someone did this on purpose,” May says.

“Well yeah, you don’t accidentally drape a body over a crystal chandelier.”

“No. Look.” She points to the table beneath the body. It’s all set up for a feast, minus the food, except, now that Skye really looks, she sees the wine glasses are out of place. And they’re full. But that’s not wine.

“Oh, God,” she croaks.

“Down!” May hisses, pulling her into a crouch behind the balcony railing.

“Is that the ghost?” Skye asks as a woman in a long, white dress wanders into the room.

May doesn’t have to answer. The woman tips her smiling face up towards the body. It’s not a ghost, it’s Simmons.

“A pity,” she says.

“He was weak,” Ward says, following behind her. “Too afraid to even avenge his daughter’s death. Pathetic.”

“Maybe he didn’t think she deserved avenging.” Simmons leans back against the table, not at all caring about the drops of blood still oozing down into the glasses around her.

Ward looks her over. “She would have made us better. He was a waste.”

“You’re right. We don’t need him anymore. Or any of them. The Bus is waiting. We only have to knock down a few pesky walls and we’ll be free to fly off.” Simmons motions with her hand like a plane taking off.

Ward shakes his head and picks up one of the glasses. May’s palm presses over Skye’s mouth as he lifts it to his lips. “The team has to be taken care of.”

Simmons takes the glass and - ewwww - takes a drink of her own. “You mean Skye has to be taken care of.”

“And the rest.” Ward is standing really close to Simmons now. Like, scary close.

“They might prove useful-”

The blood nearly spills on Simmons’ dress when Ward catches her by the hips and drags her to him. “You’re not keeping Fitz,” he growls.

She tips her head at him, the same way Ward did at Skye earlier. “Fine,” she says finally, setting the glass aside. She runs a hand into Ward’s hair. “But I get to kill Skye.”

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

“Simmons is a serial killer too!” Skye says the second the four of them are back together.

“You found her?” Fitz asks.

“What do you mean?” Phil asks, but he directs it at Melinda.

“Whatever’s gotten into Ward’s head, made him act like this? It’s done it to Simmons too. She’s walking around in a dress just like our ghost friend’s-”

“And was talking about murdering me!”

Melinda’s lips purse. “And was talking to Ward about not needing any of us, but I don’t know that she meant alive necessarily. She said the Bus was waiting.”

“They’re gonna kill you too,” Skye says to Fitz.

Phil rolls that - mostly what Melinda said, but that too - around in his head. “Who saw Ward last?” he asks. “Before he tried to kill Skye, I mean.”

Fitz raises his hand like he’s in class. “Our rooms were on the same hallway. I asked if he wanted to go exploring and he said he just wanted a long shower and a soft bed.”

Phil nods, but Melinda’s the one who fills in the blanks. “And Simmons was in the pool.”

“You think the water did this?” Skye asks.

“As good a theory as any. Fitz? You still have Donnie Gill’s prototype on board, right?”

“Uh, yeah. Weaver said she’d like my input on it. Why- oh no. No no no. Sir, that is _very_ dangerous.”

“So’s letting something that turned two of our people into cold-blooded killers keep at it.” Phil turns, heading for the nearest exit. “We’re gonna do what our ghost wants and get the hell out of here - then we’re coming back.”

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

“For the record,” Skye says, “I hate this plan.”

She swears she can hear May chuckling over the comms. “The bait always does. Now try to look more scared.”

“I’m not _trying_ to look scared,” she hisses, “I _am_ scared.”

She is alone - okay not totally alone, May’s watching from up on the balcony somewhere - with a corpse hanging over head and a bunch of creepy glasses full of blood and she is trying _very_ hard not to think about what all those smashed plates down at the end there might mean.

“Murder house,” she sing-songs. “I told you guys it was a murder house.”

“Yes, you did.”

Skye swears she jumps at least a foot at the sound of Simmons’ voice. How is she so quiet?

“Hello, Skye,” Simmons says pleasantly.

“Hi, Simmons. How’ve you been? Sleep well?”

Simmons trails her fingers along the backs of the chairs. “I haven’t slept at all actually.”

“Oh, well maybe you should. Like, now.”

Simmons tips her head in that creeptastic way again.

“Or _now_?” Skye tries.

“If you’re waiting for May to shoot me…” Simmons points and Skye sees Ward fighting May.

“So it’s just us then.”

“Looks like.”

“Awesome.” It really isn’t though.

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

“Do you even know which way we’re heading?” Leo asks.

“Nope,” Coulson says.

“Oh. Good. I was worried you didn’t have a plan.”

Coulson smiles at him. “I do have a plan. And it’s to never leave this house again!”

The ghost appears ahead of them and Coulson points one finger at her. “There’s my plan,” he says happily.

“Leave!” the ghost bellows. “Leave or die!”

“See,” Coulson says calmly, “the thing is, I don’t think that’s a threat. You haven’t actually hurt any of us. I think you’re warning us away from the other thing.”

The ghost looks away.

“Did it do this to you?” Leo asks.

She nods. “It killed me, to punish my father.” She tosses her hair back, unashamed of her scars. “You can’t save your friends.”

“Maybe,” Coulson says. Leo turns to him in horror, but he doesn’t pay attention. “But we want to stop this thing anyway. Help us.”

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

“I am sorry,” Jemma says as she advances on Skye. She’s already knocked away Skye’s night-night gun and, it seems, Skye is unwilling to risk truly hurting her. It’s terribly pathetic.

“Really?” Skye asks, dodging and throwing a chair down in Jemma’s path. “Does that mean you might reconsider the murdering me?”

Up above, Ward and May trade blows. It seems the Cavalry has none of Skye’s compunctions about hurting her friends. They really could use her. Perhaps after Skye’s taken care of, Ward will be more willing to entertain the possibility of adding her to their whole.

“I’m afraid not,” Jemma says. “If you’re not with us, you’re a threat. And I don’t intend on sharing. But I will make it fast, if only you’ll stand still.”

“Oh sure. Totally. In just one-”

Ward falls from the balcony. Jemma takes one step towards him, fearful he’s been truly hurt, but he’s already back on his feet.

“-second.”

The triumph in the single word distracts Jemma from Ward. Skye grins and slams the sonic staff she’s holding into the ground.

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

“Wow,” Phil says, panting. “You were not kidding about the statue lady.”

She’s not that scary anymore though, seeing as she’s nothing but a pile of dust on the ground. Well, dust and a few identifiable body parts. That eye is still blinking…

“Yeah,” Fitz pants next to him. He got most of the good hits in.

“If you two are done,” Stephanie - not exactly a traditional ghost name, but Phil’s modern, he can deal - says. Now that they’re all on the same side, she’s a lot less doom and gloom and more stuck-up princess.

“Hey!” Fitz snaps. “If you’re in such a hurry, you could’ve tried helping.”

Stephanie rolls a hand through the air. “My powers only work on the living. That thing wasn’t alive, it was just a construct It made so it can act when none of its slaves will do the job.”

“Wait.” Fitz scrambles to his feet to follow after her. Phil brings up the rear. “So you’re saying the monster controlling this house tried to seduce me?”

She shrugs. “Or it wanted to kill you. Or get you in the bathroom so it could take control of you like the others. It’s hard to say.”

“Try not to think about it too hard,” Phil advises as they turn into the boiler room. Fitz is still looking kinda sick as he takes in the room. “And get to work. There’s no telling how the others are doing.”

The reminder doesn’t exactly help the looking sick problem, but it does get him moving. In no time at all, the pipes are frosting over and the temperature is dropping so low Phil can see his breath.

“We’d … better run,” Fitz says. If all goes according to plan, every drop of water in the house is gonna freeze.  _Every_ drop, even those in human bodies.

“Right.” Phil follows him back into the narrow basement hallways. Stephanie stays behind.

 

oo00oo00oo00oo

 

Grant wakes up on the Bus with an aching head.

“Dehydration,” Skye says. She’s perched on a stool next to his bed. “We had to dry you guys out to kill the parasites.”

“Who-?” he asks, turning his head. Simmons is in the bed next to his, looking pale and small. “Parasites?”

“You don’t remember?” Coulson straightens up in the doorway when he sees Grant awake. Fitz leaves off checking Simmons’ vitals to check his.

Grant shifts gingerly, testing his muscles to see if there are any new injuries. “Do I want to remember?”

“You tried to serial kill me,” Skye says.

“It’s okay,” Fitz says while Grant’s still gaping. “She’s been harping on that all day.”

“Because he tried to kill me!” she shrieks, but she winks at Grant after.

“Okay,” Grant says slowly. “How bad was it, scale of one to ten?”

“Eleven.”

“Thirteen,” Coulson says.

Jeez. That is bad.

“Did I hurt you?” he asks Skye.

“Nah.”

“Simmons almost did though,” Fitz mutters.

“What?” Grant yells.

From the next bed, Simmons hisses in a breath.

“Whoops!” Skye says happily. “Wakey, wakey, princess!”

“Ohhhh,” Simmons moans, one hand flying to her head. Grant doesn’t blame her. “Where are we?”

“The Bus,” Coulson says while Fitz rushes over to fuss with her now. “Don’t worry, you’re fine. And Ward already told us he doesn’t remember so don’t push too hard. If it comes back, it’ll do it in its own time.”

Simmons lifts her head so she can see Grant over the bedrail. Their eyes meet and Grant knows she remembers exactly as much as he does: everything.

 


End file.
